It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from time to time, in history, men are born a whole age too soon.

I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional.

There is some awe mixed with the joy of our surprise, when this poet, who lived in some past world, two or three hundred years ago, says that which lies close to my own soul, that which I also had wellnigh thought and said.

When I read a good book, I wish my life were three thousand years long.

The highest revelation is that God is in every man.

The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.

The hero sees that the event is ancillary: it must follow him.